The beautiful shoreline of Lake Superior in late winter/early spring. There is always a chance for some interesting ice formations. The waves had created this inlet in the ice and a small arch of ice at its farthest edge.
Type of Critique Requested
Aesthetic: Feedback on the overall visual appeal of the image, including its color, lighting, cropping, and composition.
Specific Feedback and Self-Critique
Hi Tim. Thanks for doing the guest critique. It is always a bit mysterious to me as to how images get chosen in contests. I feel as if I have trouble deciding which of mine make the cut and which ones dont. Im looking forward to reading your advice on all of the submissions in the critique.
Technical Details
Sony a7ii. 20mm. 1/8sec f22 ISO100. I wanted the longer shutter speed in order to show the movement in the water, but that also meant that the light was getting pretty bright in the sky. I feel like i balanced it as well as i could in post.
Certainly an interesting subject and composition, Cameron. Can’t say I’ve ever seen a formation like this one. I love the warm, nicely textured water rushing toward the camera (at least that’s what I think it is) and the beautiful light. The area of blown out sky around the sun is a bit distracting and I wish you could tone it down but I’m afraid if you tried the results would look unnatural. Fantastic find!
There are loads of reasons to like this and I think I would recommend it to go through to the second round of a competition because it’s novel, it’s well captured and it’s well composed.
There are a few distractions that might prevent it going further. The judges tend to have conflicting opinions on sunstars, some like them some hate them but that’s down to personal opinion (and there’s a lot of that in competitions). The area around the sun and just above is blown out, which is a bit of a pain - Bret mentions this but I think I can make it look better (sample attached - I use a circular grad behind the area that was blown out). Also the clouds are really dark in comparison with the snow, which could be an artefact of vignetting or a graduated filter or exposure blend. The very dark clouds on the edges of the frame can be distracting though - I did a bit of post processing to minimise this (duped a layer, use aggressive shadow recovery, hid layer, painted the layer back in where I wanted it)
Beyond these 'problens (minor I know) the success of the image would rely on taste and how the other pictures in the competition are. There is a tendency in some judges to want things to look perfect and the snow here might be seen to be a bit dirty but it doesn’t bother me…
Nicely found and captured - an interesting photo. As an aside, I’d be interested in how it would have looked with a longer exposure!)
Thanks Tim. I probably should have used an ND filter. I was trying to balance getting some movement in the water with the sunlight. I was actually planning originally to get photos before the sun was up but then the way it lit up this little inlet was so cool, these ended up being my favorite shots. I did mask and edit the snow, which probably explains the difference with the clouds. Didnt know about the sunstar thing. Will keep it in mind with future contests. Dirty snow is the bane of my early spring photography. I actually thought this was comparatively smooth. Im including another slightly different water configuration with no editing.
Hi Bret. Thank you for your comments. I was trying to balance out the sun and some movement in the water. I have some trouble editing the sun when it is blown out so that it does not look too dark. I guess ill continue to practice. Tim did an edit that looks nice. Lake Superior forms these temporary ice inlets at times. That is water in the front. It is full of chunks and balls of ice so it definitely looks strange.
Hey Cameron - when I saw this I was going to jump in, but waited until Tim had his moment to critique. I like what he’d done with the snow because the whole thing is pretty darn great. Having just spent a few days on Superior in February (near Two Harbors on the west coast), I am a bit jealous of the ice you had for this. As you know, mild winters do not make for much ice on Superior so finding this formation and doing such a great job with it is to be congratulated. Agree that a longer exposure might have made the ice texture even more prominent, but hard to do with the sun still over the horizon. A second shot with it below might have been feasible and you could blend them. If you have a minute, check out a 13-second exposure I did when I was up there. It was after the sun was over the horizon so I could do it. The portfolio link on my profile will take you there. Congratulations on a stunning photo.
